Announcement

Alex Grigoryan of Walmart Labs released a statement on Medium.com 3rd October 2016 explaining the the details of the applications and the scale that they operate at Walmart.

Alex writes about some of the challenges experienced by developers working on large projects. These include code re-use, performance and best practice. He says: “The problems we solved at @WalmartLabs, we want to solve for the community. So that’s what Electrode gives you out of the box”

In the first month following the announcement, Alex has engaged with the communities and responded to many questions asked about the software. The Github repository has already gained over 200 Github stars and contributions from the core developers are maintained on a daily basis.

Summary

Although early days for Electrode, this does look like a sincere investment in the Open Source ecosystem. On one hand, it enables other retailers to import the code and build their own competing platforms. On the other, it clearly sets Walmart as a lead innovator in this space and enables them to bring to life from contributions and enhancements submitted by external developers.

It will be interesting to see which forward-thinking retailers follow suit or collaborate in using and improving the software exported by Walmart.

Pleased to learn that @NHSDigital are 'looking for an experienced #OpenSource software expert' - 'to raise awareness of NHS open source' and ' practically support the health and care system to realise open source’s full potential'